I know it’s just because it’s early days, but I haven’t hit a single impenetrable Sentry nest, and the alternate routes are deliciously labyrinthine. It feels teeming with nooks and crannies to hide out in, recharge and take an unexpected angle from. And I love having a section of track that runs underneath the main play area. Tim and I skewered the enemy team repeatedly as they tried to escort the cart through that underground tunnel, he as a Sniper from the front, I as a Spy from the back.

I thought at first it was just a superior Spy map, but I played it solely as Heavy for some time today, and it was among the most fun I’ve ever had as that class. In fact, for the first time in ten months, I broke my all-time score record. 36 points from 16 kills as a Spy defending stage 3 of Dustbowl, replaced by 37 points and 16 kills assaulting Badwater Basin as a Heavy with incalculable aid from Doctor Graham Smith. I think we survived the entire round, and were with the cart almost every metre of the way. Cap score grind plus plus.

I know, I know, you’ve got 48 kills as an Engineer and 39 as a Demo – shut up.

I’m not yet clear on the precise conditions that cause it to occur, but the system whereby a third of the players must sit out every round is bizarre and disastrous. I’m just not interested in spending my free time that way; impotently watching two teams of strangers blunder awkwardly into one another.

I don’t see why there can’t be two full teams. What is the presumably monumental problem that’s worth paying the exorbitant cost of boring a third of your players to solve?

If you want lower player counts, lower the player counts. If you want to scramble the teams, scramble them whenever one side wins three times in a row. Use the rescrambling to separate the highest scorers, and prefer to keep friends together unless they’re dominating.

With that system, Arena would be worthwhile to me because its format undermines the feasibility of Sentry nests, the biggest drain on my fun with TF2. Without it, I’m just not playing.

Heavy Unlocks
Funny, don’t want ’em.

I am, of course, reserving judgement on all of them until I actually try them out. The Sandvich is a lovely idea, but the prospect doesn’t entice me particularly. I don’t die because I enter a fight with partial health, I die because I take more than 300 damage before I can retreat.

Likewise, the other unlocks don’t attempt to solve any of the reasons I avoid the Heavy, and don’t add possibilities that excite me on paper. The reason I avoid him is that his slowness and similar weapons make him tactically inflexible: he can only deal with one kind of situation, and he doesn’t have the tools to engineer it. If he encounters something unexpected and undesirable, he has no options. Boxing gloves, a slow-gun and a snack don’t sound like they give me more options, and I thrive on options.

I’ll update this if that impression is mistaken, but I think unlockables need to entice as much as perform, and this is the first time they haven’t done that for me. For others, too – I’ve only seen one Natascha and no boxing gloves, and there are rarely more than four Heavies per team. It’s nothing like the mono-class unlock fever that gripped Pyro and Medic week.

Reading that, I pictured a glorious mountain-climb of a map, something Tim is always saying would add some much-needed drama to TF2’s struggles. The reality is a truly lovely place that I long to spend time in, but it looks to me an awful lot like a perfectly symmetrical square of entirely flat land around big square building. I guess he’s talking about the background.

Regardless, like a lot of people I’m in love with this new style and I can’t wait for them to make a map in it that I actually want to play.

Follow

Qazi: I concur. Timberyard is beautiful, but Arena really is irritating. I can't wait for the first batch of community Alpine maps.
I couldn't really bring myself to play much Heavy, because it is such a good time to be a Medic. The new 25% Kritzkrieg boost is phenomenal; snapping off a Soldier or Heavy's crit stream every 45 seconds is devastating, and tends to ensure the enemy Medic's death, before he can get an invulnerable Ã¼ber fully charged.
Bizarrely, I started with 5 second plan & Photostroika already unlocked, which is great! It means I don't need to do the worst achievement of the pack, whenever I finally feel like getting them.

spuzman00: Yeah, I'm also looking forward to being a medic- perfect time to get those achievements I've been to lazy to try for, like the "so much healing in 1 life" thing.

I really wish Timberyard was a map outside of Arena- I really want to play there, but I want long term games, not just short bursts.

Newt Pulsifer: I didn't like the Arena mode either...
It feels sooo.. good to win those games that takes 10min to cap the last point, and when you are almost there, the enemy captures their second point, than you cap it back and rush for the last and it's all cheers and woohooo r0xy team and so on.
On the other hand, winning/losing the game within 100seconds feels sooo.. shit :(
But, dude, this "Ravine" map is fuckin' awesome!!!!

LaZodiac: How insightfull. Hopefully we will get to see a part two when it isn't 3 in the morning. Atlest, its 3 in the morning for me, not sure about you none Canadians and Trinidad people.

Idlehands: You don't sound overly impressed by this update. What game mode would you have prefered to Arena?

I thought Arena sounded like shite, but I got hopeful that it may cause players to work more closely as a team and create fun little moments (eg pushing enemies back into pyros with heavies). But how is it actually playing so far (I'm at work and have to wait to see the update in action)?

Can't wait for more Alpine maps, and to see heavies eating sandviches.

Jay: I was a bit nonplussed by the Arena mode too - it sounds a bit too much like Counter Strike, with all the problems it entails, particularly for gung ho people such as meself

Loving the new Alpine environments; bugger whether it fits the game, it just looks pretty

And the Heavy sandwich animation is hilarious

J-man: I mostly concur with your thoughts.

J-man: Just noticed this in the fixes section-

"Fixed a loophole that allowed players to pickup weapons of other classesW

DoctorDisaster: I had actually gotten all confused by the allure of the alpine environment, and was actually looking forward to arena mode.

HOW SILLY OF ME.

It was terrible. It was frustrating, then boring, then frustrating again. It also locked our server into "arena mode" which apparently means screwing up your player limit and server name, then limiting voting options to arena maps. All you people who are talking about what a great time it is to be a medic are right, but you're also ignoring arena, which is the most anti-medic game mode ever conceived.

I can understand how some hardcore HURR SKILLZ people are going to like arena, so it's nice that it exists I guess. I even understand why they started alpine off with one arena map; that's the quickest way to get the tileset out there to community mappers. I just wish I could actually get some fun gameplay in on the sexy new environment.

You guys might want to reconsider one aspect of the update, though: Natascha is apparently pretty awesome if you're a good heavy. My clan's star heavy just won't put her down, and she's been the source of some really fun moments.

Mobba: I haven't played arena yet, but I've specced all the maps, and compared to cs, they are tiny. I can imagine its chaotic, after my experience with duel_duel and 2fort insta, I don't think I'm going to even try arena.

Glad steel is going to be more available to play, and badwater looks ok, I would really love a payload in alpine.

Heavy Unlocks: Alright, though I don't play Heavy often, so I won't really get the achievements, which is fine by me.

Alpine Environment: Frickin great.

I did play Arena_Well earlier today, and a heavy was getting damaged like crazy, while I was a scout coming from behind (Just havin fun, not trying, batting people to death, etc.). I notice him bring out his sandvich, and I ran up the hill, behind his back, and he started eating it. He had a mic, so when I started to bat him to death, he was yelling 'No! No! No! No! Get away!' but I killed him. Can't wait for more kills like that.

roburky: Reason I don't like badwater basin: That last point is a bloody maze, and none of it connects up in any kind of logical manner.

Reason I like arena: It's actually based around the kind of play that I love most about TF2 - where people are communicating and cooperating. If you and your teammates don't use your microphones, yes it will be shit.

First game I played, we had one very chatty scout who actually did some scouting. He jumped all over the map telling us exactly where each enemy was at all times.

Lack_26: I agree entirely with what you've said, also you and graham make a awesome heavy team, which were the bane of my life (death?) back there. At least on arena though being a scout has some use (less players), but yeah, Badwater basin is utterly uber.

Cossak: I've played a few matches of Arena, mostly on lumberyard and briefly on arena (haven't tried the rejigged well etc.) and I can understand why you'd feel the way you do about it. With more than 12 players on a server, the team rebalancing and the short rounds combine for a crap experience, but with the maximum number of players per team increased so there is no rebalancing except after a team wins, it changes altogether and becomes much more fun and exciting; very different to the long drawn out payload and control point matches.

Cossak: I meant briefly on Ravine, which I feel is a much poorer map than Lumberyard, which is one of the best Valve have released. I also spent a while on cp_steel, which I thought felt really balanced due to the huge number of paths around the map, but it's just a little too hard to navigate for my liking.

Tim E: We'll need to play it every day for the next three months to check, but I think Badwater might be the best map yet. Elevation changes make all the difference.

Jay: Steel. Is. Fucking. Awesome

Pixel Knight: I actually ran into a problem with Steel. I got the final version, "cp_steel", and now I'm having some issues joining games playing cp_steel.

Apparently the auto-updater didn't overwrite the map file, and now Steam says that I don't have the same version as the server and can't join. :(

Newt Pulsifer: @Pixel Knight:
Try backuping your cp_steel.bsp map file and than deleting it from the folder.
Join a game and let your client download the map. Worked for me :)

Sentry Gun: Pixel Knight: That shouldn't be a problem, seeing as to how every previous version of Steel had "_b#" attached to it, stating which build it was.

Aeneas: Its a good time to be an awful spy (which I most certainly am). Played badwater basin last night and got 10!!! back stabs on heavies and medics. Which is 8 more than my old old (I did say I sucked?).

Ten-High Charlie: I find Arena mode is inCREDibly fun if you playing with people you know. I played for a good two hours with some friends and friends-of-friends on an all talk server Patch Day and it was a blast. Its the perfect mode to play with people you know where you don't want constantly concentrate on pushing little kart or getting on that point, but want to relax and just maim.

I came to this conclusion because when I loaded up the arena server again without my friends today I did not have fun. All the fun was sucked out by what you wrote above (Pentadact). It just seemed like a hodge-podge of idea Valve thought would be a good idea together.

Fun casually, not so much competitively.

Inferno: I can understand why you wouldn't enjoy it as much, as whenever you're playing, you do it without mic on in the game.

TF2 wouldn't be half as fun for me with out all the of j-server and PCG chat peeps and arena wouldn't be fun at all with out it.

You HAVE to work as a team and stick together with scouts pointing out where the others are over voice and only going in once they're sure that a sniper or medic is on their own before getting out FAST.

Interestingly, I think valve developed this mode for the kinds of people who don't like TF2. I've seen numerous highly competitive FPS players who looked away from TF2 in disgust (something I just can't understand when it's made so well) actually enjoying this mode.

Then again I've loved everything valve have done in TF2 so far so I guess I'm just wierd like that :D

DoctorDisaster: @Inferno: Yeah, it definitely seems designed to appease hardcore twitch-shooter types. But do we really want TF2 invaded by Counterstrikers?

@the people who say playing with people you know improves arena: I have to disagree. Like I said, my first lumberyard run was on my clan server with a bunch of friends, chatting both in-game and on teamspeak. At the beginning, we were gushing about how amazing the alpine environment looks. Five minutes in, all but one of us were complaining about how crap the gameplay was, and the one dissenter was instead complaining about how arena had hijacked the server config.

Now, some people have since warmed to it because it's a more precise measure of their FPS e-peens, but I've got a league team for serious skill challenges. When I'm pubbing, I want FUN.